Payroll Firm ADP Reports U.S. Jobs Still Declining

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While job losses are narrowing, payroll and HR outsourcing giant ADP says that the U.S. economy has not started to add net new jobs yet. ADP released its most recent report, which showed services jobs were on the rise, ahead of the release later this week of the jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statics. ADP's CEO urged businesses to take advantage of the immediate incentives available to employers for adding jobs as provided for in the new federal HIRE Act.

Job declines are narrowing for the U.S.
economy, but things still haven’t turned around enough so that we are adding
jobs.

The private sector of the economy shed another net 23,000 jobs between February
and March, according to the most recent ADP
National Employment Report from payroll processing and HR outsourcing firm ADP.

Large businesses dropped 7,000 from their payrolls, small businesses cut
12,000, and medium businesses shrank payrolls by 4,000 workers, according to
the report, prepared in partnership with Macroeconomic Advisors. The report is
derived from payroll data and measures the change in total non-farm private
employment month to month.

(For the purposes of the report, large businesses are those with more than 499
employees, medium businesses are those with 50 to 499 employees and small
businesses are those with one to 49 employees.)

"American businesses are on the cusp of recovery yet this report shows that
they remain hesitant to increase their payrolls," said Gary Butler, president
and CEO of ADP,
in a statement.

He pointed out that the recently signed federal HIRE
Act provides immediate incentives to employers for every job they create.

"The HIRE Act and similar incentives are
necessary to expand payrolls and reverse the trend in private sector
employment," he said.

Yet the employment report for March showed a continuing narrowing of job
declines, noted Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisors.

"The March employment decline was the smallest since employment began falling
in February of 2008," he said in a statement. "Yet, the lack of improvement in
employment from February to March is consistent with the pause in the decline
of initial unemployment claims that occurred during the winter."

Prakken said that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report that will be
released on Friday may very well look stronger than ADP’s
data because it will include federal hiring in March for the 2010 U.S. Census
and because the ADP report does not include
the effects of recent bad weather.

Within the subset of small businesses, ADP
noted that the service-providing sector added 15,000 jobs while the
goods-producing sector lost 27,000 jobs for a net job loss of 12,000. The
increase in jobs in the service-providing sector marked the third consecutive
monthly increase and the highest job growth since March of 2008, according to
Prakken.

ADP’s reports are derived from the company’s
payroll data, which averaged over 360,000 U.S.
business clients and represented over 22 million U.S.
employees over the last 12 months. This approximately represents the size
of the matched sample used this month, the company said.

Jessica Davis covers the channel for eWeek and Channel Insider. Her technology journalism career began well before anyone heard of the World Wide Web and has included stints at Infoworld, Electronic News/EDN, and the Philadelphia Business Journal. Her work has also appeared on CNN and Forbes.com. She has covered hardware, software and networking, as well as the business side of technology. She has won several journalism awards, including a national ASBPE award for best staff-written column, and was named Marketing Computers hardest working tech journalist on their inaugural list of top tech journalists. Jessica can be reached at jessica.davis@ziffdavisenterprise.com

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